VII. Fire Ants and Jungle Rot

No travelers arrived, but instead of a day off, Maow, boss of the Thai Jungle Adventure Tour company, decided to test me to see if I could keep up with her. Maow was the perfect name for her, everything about her suggested a cat; the way she moved, the way she seemed ready to pounce when she didn’t move, the way she smiled whenever I finally realized that she was messing with me.

The test began at the river, which Maow quickly crossed, hopping from rock to rock. I’ve never been any good at rock-hopping, so after falling in a few times, I gave up and waded across. My feet got soaked, but it was a hot day, so it seemed logical to let my boots dry on me.

There were no paths on the other side of the river, as far as I could see, but that didn’t stop Maow. Her family hunted in this jungle for generations. This was a walk in the park for her. After about an hour of chasing her, I finally caught up at the top of a cliff.

“Now what?” I asked, catching my breath, but she was already gone.

I peeked over the cliff. Maow was climbing down a lattice of gnarled roots.

“Are these strong enough?” I called down.

She looked up, shrugged, and kept going. Being worse with heights than I am with rock-hopping, I crawled over butt-first and tested the top root. Once I decided it could hold my weight, I felt around for the next one, and tested that. I wasn’t taking any chances. The song from Santa Claus is Coming to Town kept playing in my head, “Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walkin’ ‘cross the floor-or-or…” although it didn’t technically apply.

When I finally made it down, Maow was already scrambling away. I ran after her, over fallen trees, through ditches, and up a steep hillside. I edged my way around the corner of a narrow ledge, blindly feeling for something to hold on to, when I put my hand into a nest of something; a burning, biting nest of something. My hand was covered with tiny red ants ─ Fire Ants! I don’t know if that’s what they’re really called, but I liked the sound of it.

I tried shaking them off, but they stayed on. I tried picking and blowing them off, but they stayed on. I tried wiping them off on my pants, but they stayed on. In the process, they managed to make it to my other hand as well, burrowing between fingers. My hands were burning and blistering but there was nothing I could do about them; I was losing track of Maow. I ran down the hill after her, waving my hands in the air like a cartoon housewife being chased by a mouse. Fortunately, there was a river at the bottom of the hill. I plunged my hands in the soothing water. Had I actually been a cartoon housewife, there would have been a hissing sound and rising steam.

“Hey! Whatch’you waiting for?” Maow yelled from atop a huge boulder above me. She was hanging onto a vine, “Come on!” She jumped off the boulder and swung right across the river.

By this point, my enthusiasm had dampened somewhat. Aside from my blistered hands, I was sticky, sweaty, encrusted in mud, and my feet were starting to itch. Still, I’ve always been a sucker for a Tarzan vine. I climbed up and Maow flung the vine to me. In a literal leap of faith, I swung across the river, forgetting all my pain, my irritation and self-pity.

God, I loved the jungle!

The next morning, my feet were purple and swollen to twice their normal size ─ Jungle Rot! I don’t know if that’s what it’s really called either, but, again, I liked the sound of it. I should have taken my shoes and socks off to dry when I first got them wet. Now my feet belonged to the Elephant Man.

I pried open my toes and wedged in my flip-flops; not that it mattered, I couldn’t walk anyway. Maow dragged me to the back of the pickup truck and threw me in. She drove me to the local clinic where a doctor plunged a long needle right into the bottom of my very sensitive foot. “If the shot really needed to be in the foot, why only one foot?” I thought. But I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful; the treatment only cost a dollar.

The doctor gave me some cream and a baggie full of pills (Thai clinics always give you a baggie full of pills; no matter what you go in for). Three days later, my feet were back to normal. I was walking again and jumping and skipping around. I think it was the pills. I don’t know what they were, I never asked. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.